I found a swear in the Hitchhiker's source code: https://github.com/historicalsource/hitchhikersguide/blob/ma...
"swear"
you have failed the Leisure Suit Larry Age Verification.
also, Toshiba is not a car.
Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
201–210 of 241 posts
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#202Each game (from the ones I recognize) fit on a single 5.25" 360KB floppy. We barely think in megabytes anymore.
I think grub might fit on that, but you would probably have to swap floppies 4 times to load the kernel.
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#203My that looks like LISP!
I vaguely remember in the original zork (I think it was called "dungeon" at the time) you got into some super-secret room and some secret message said "MEMQ" in it.
Can't see it in any of the source here.
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have statistics on how much time people spend playing Candy Crush or other modern games? I think a lot of people have spent 70 hours watching Game of Thrones. But if length is really a problem, making shorter versions wouldn't be hard.
My point is that playing IF games is a major commitment, unlike Candy Crush or watching any TV show, which are 0 commitment activities. There is no casual playing of HHGTTG or Zork or Hadean Lands.
You play it casually just like you read a fiction paperback casually.
In the annual interactive fiction contest, the judges get 2 hours to evaluate ba game. So many new games aim for that to be the playing time.
From what I remember some old Infocom games like Enchanter (which takes place in the Zork universe) don't take very long to finish (definitely less than a standard $60 video game console video game).
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#205For those of you who are new to text adventures you can find images of most of the game boxes here - http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/ and various other resources here http://infocom.elsewhere.org/
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#206Cool!
Now, does anyone know the significance of ‘xyzzy’ and ‘plugh’? :)
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#207Hitchhikers Guide was one of the first PC games I ever got. I had no idea it was a “text adventure.” Nor did I understand it was based on a book. My dad got it for me used from The Computer Club in downtown Lake Oswego, Oregon. I picked it out largely due to the green guy on the front of the box. I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from…
Okay, I’m going to be all hipster on everyone here but seriously has no-one ever heard the original radio series? The original and better than a) the books b) the TV series and c) the movie. They’ve all got their moments (except the TV series, that’s kind of a waste of time).
The TV series is awesome because it does all the computer animation effects from the Guide by hand-drawing them, because at the time actual computer animation would have been ludicrously expensive.
It's also better than the books because it stops, instead of carrying on well after the joke ceases being funny.
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. I was active in BBSs but didn’t remember walkthroughs. But then I knew a number of the authors and just asked them if I was really stuck :-)
Yep, they were out there. Some folks got really upset about walkthroughs and/or spoilers, as though it was cheating, saying "it was hard for me to figure out, it should be hard for others, too!" Many debates about the ethics of walkthroughs. So yeah, walkthroughs were popular. Another favorite was Easter Eggs (hidden features). I remember one particular firestorm on my BBS -- an author claimed there was an Easter Egg…
Well, now with BZFlag, you can play those games under urban envs.
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#209If you have an interest in odd programming languages, the 'spiritual successor' to these games written in the Infocom ZIL language would be Inform7. I think it is quite a fascinating declarative language that reads much like English, for example: The same division between creating things, and laying down rules, is visible in Inform source text. The creation of the world is done by making unconditional factual stateme…
Inform6 was first, and it was far easier to grasp than ZIL and Inform7 itself.
Re: Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games
#210Reminds me of that time I hacked together Zork for the Google Home. You can still try it out, I think, if you say "Ok, Google, let me talk to Dungeon RPG" https://github.com/mitchellgordon95/DungeonForGoogleHome
Oh, cool! I'd love for someone to make a more fully-baked version of this. Get some good audiobook narrators and voice actors, and add sound effects and stuff! Smart assistants, ironically, feel like the perfect medium for "text" adventure games to have a resurgence.
There was a Zork interface for Asterisk, which allowed to play the game over VoIP and with Festival as a TTS.